Thursday

It’s February! Woke up at 7:10am, had a banana and rice + soup for breakfast, then drove to school. First up today was 4-1 in period 1. After finishing the play, we finally started a new unit, countries! We started off the lesson finishing writing their reflection cards on the play, and then started off with a song, and then a quiz. The 4th graders are much more calm when guessing, and they actually guessed properly unlike the 5th graders who just yelled out whatever country came to mind. Then we played the keyword game before time was up. All in all a nice, calm lesson. 1-1 next in period 2 and for once all the planned activities actually managed to fill the whole lesson! We read “Brown bear brown bear” and then sang the colour song, and played the colour card exchanging game for revision. Then we did the Missing Game with animal flashcards, and that managed to fill the rest of the lesson time. It was pretty funny because at one point one kid forgot the word for “fish”, so one other kid was like “なんとか burger” (he was hinting at fish burger for a clue) which was just hilarious.

Next up was 1-2 in period 3, and they were very good today as well. It was very adorable because while I was reading the picture book, a few kids were following along after me, repeating what I said as I said it so that it was almost like they were reading along with me. I just realised that they really do copy everything, down to the last tone, because NZers have a habit of raising their tone at the end of a sentence (as if it were a question), and when the kids were repeating after me I realised they were doing it too! It’s extra cute when they do it though, since their voices are all still pretty baby-ish. 1-3 in period 4 and they were super good today. In fact they finished all the games I prepared way faster than 1-1 and 1-2, so we had a spare 5 minutes at the end. We used this to play Mr Cat, what time is it, since they all love it so much. They know everything about the game by heart now, so it’s great. Had lunch today with 3-2 again and they were relatively quieter than yesterday, but I think that’s thanks to today’s broadcast being the storybook reading session. The kids are always really quiet listening to the story being read, no matter how rowdy they might normally be in class. We had one of the more delicious school lunch combos today – ramen, salad, and chocolate bread. There were 5 kids away today from 3-2 (4 with fever, 1 with the flu) so there was a lot of milk leftover. Spent the lunchtime inside today since it had started snowing again! And I definitely didn’t feel like getting cold and wet. Cleaning time was better than yesterday.

Last class of the day with 4-2 in period 5 and it was a great lively lesson today. The kids loved the quizzes and games and participated with so much enthusiasm. When we finished the powerpoint quiz (looking at pictures and guessing which country the pictures were from), the kids were like “awh is it finished?” and “one more quiz! One more quiz!” so I think I’ll make some more for next week. Just had a slight problem at the end with the keyword game, cause two kids didn’t want to play and were just being a bit moody. Everyone else was great though. Got off work at 16:10 and drove home in the snow (which was more like rain since it wasn’t cold enough for it to collect on the ground).